System disc hot swap

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Last response: April 8, 2010 11:49 AM in Storage

wilkas

April 4, 2010 7:44:37 PM

I am kinda new to RAID discs. I wonder if such scenario is possible.

I set up RAID 1 (mirror) for system disc. Set HDD booting sequence in BIOS.

If one of RAID 1 discs would fail, will computer skip to working disc and load normally without any computer user interference?

If yes, how should I do it in computer currently having 1 system HDD. Should I use disc mirroring via Windows disc management feature or use BIOS motherboard integrated RAID options?

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r_manic

April 5, 2010 4:54:03 AM

AFAIK, if one of the drives fail, the array will enter into recovery mode, and try recreating the data on the failed mirror. Whatever the case, RAID arrays represent additional reliability problems, so I would suggest you practice backup religiously if you decide to go the RAID 1 route.

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wilkas

April 5, 2010 7:21:16 AM

OK, if RAID 1 is not the way.
Is there any way for IT not literate user to continue work with a PC after system HDD fail without waiting until IT service restores computer to working state?

I can easily setup regular system image backing up, but still only I know how to recover it to a new HDD and that user would need to wait until I arrive and fix it. Quite a downtime.

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gtvr

April 5, 2010 1:03:26 PM

If one of your RAID 1 disks fails, the array is still online, because the OTHER RAID disk is still OK. That is the point of RAID 1 - 2 copies of the data appearing as 1 logical drive (say, C drive for simplicity). Your C drive is still there as far as the computer is concerned.

r_manic, not sure what you mean by the RAID array representing "additional reliability problems". If your data is important, you should back it up regardless of RAID, but RAID 1 gives you a bit more, not less, reliability. Recovery mode does not take the drive offline, at least with the hardware arrays I've worked with. It could impact performance some during the rebuild.